Tag Archives: environment

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A Need For More Carefully Regulated Marine Protected Areas

If you pay attention to recent news and environmentalists, you’ve probably heard that there is an ever increasing push to have a larger number of conservation areas for wildlife protection. This is extremely important in a world where populations are exploding and humans are constantly transforming rural areas into urbanized zones.  Globally there are 13 million hectares of deforestation occurring every year, with rare countries showing as much as a 28% increase of clear cutting. Although land protection is very important, it seems like less press time is given to the protection of marine habitats.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ea/US-NationalMarineProtectedAreasCenter-Logo.svg

In the last few year there has been a push for marine protected areas; however,  a disturbing, 6 year study from Australia published in nature, shows that these marine protected areas or MPAs are not having as positive an effect as we might have hoped. With the total fish biomass having declined by two thirds in fished areas it’s extremely worrisome that fifty nine percent of the marine protected areas studied were not “ecologically distinguishable from fished sites”.

The study chose 5 characteristics to describe a well run marine protected area, and found that only those MPAs which contained at least 4 of these characteristics were effective. These characteristics were that the areas were:  established for more then 10 years, allowed no fishing, were larger then 100km squared and are isolated by deep water or sand. When 4 or more of these were present it was shown that there was huge improvements in larger fish biomass with up to 14 times more shark biomass and 5 times more large fish biomass.

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However 59% of MPAs were ineffective and  did not contain 4  or more of these characteristics, with only one of the 26 MPAs examined containing all 5. This means that simply saying an area is “a marine protected area” is not an effective strategy. The world must do more to ensure that these areas are researched to be important ecological areas and that these MPAs will be well enforced, allow no fishing, be larger then 100km squared and are isolated by deep water or sand.

Written by Andrew Hefford 

 

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Posted on March 2, 2014 by in Uncategorized

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What if oneday you need to wear a mask and carry an air purifier everywhere you go?

Posted on January 27, 2014 by | 1 comment

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_SY6r8MlDU[/youtube]

what are you doing when you are reading my blog?

When you  are sitting in front of your computer or  laptop, reading my blog, or maybe drinking a cup of coffee , but do you notice that you are doing something else at the same time which you have been doing for your entire life? Yes, it is breathing!  Breathing is what we do in every second of our daily  life, and air is one of the most important element for humans and other animals to survive. We can live for  a few days without food or water, but we can’t even live for more than a few minutes without breathing air!

Air pollution affects our health

Breathing polluted air can cause a wide range of illnesses and mortality. There has been increased rates of premature deaths caused by air pollution all around the world. The air we breath in penetrates deep into our lungs, and when air is heavily polluted, harmful chemicals can be carried into our internal organs. Most of the harmful chemicals in air, such as benzene or vinyl chloride, which come from industry pollutant or coal consumption  are very toxic.  Breathing polluted air can cause throat and lung cancer, nose and eye allergy, stroke and other heart diseases, nerve and brain damage.

Air pollution affects our daily life

In China, the air quality is measured to be world’s heaviest PM 2.5 pollution and people’s daily life are affected because of the air. In order not to get sick from breathing in the polluted air, people in many cities of  China have taken many self-protection measures into action. For example, outdoor activities are prevented as much as they can, and when people have to go outside, they have to  wear N95 face masks which can protect them from PM 2.5 effectively.  Traffic is also affected as the air is heavily polluted because the air is not clear but instead it has a cloudy white color. Therefore, it is very hard for the drivers to see the road condition, causing more traffic accidents. Air conditioners and purifiers are used indoor for air circulation so that people can breath in fresh air without wearing a mask.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a4/Beijing_smog_comparison_August_2005.png

Actions should be taken to prevent air pollution

For many people air pollution seems to be a very far topic from our daily life, like myself,  who live in Vancouver–the most beautiful place in the world. However, for many people living in other parts of the world, they have no access to fresh and clean air all their life. And it is shown that increased deaths are caused by air pollution all over the world. Can you imagine that one day  we need to wear masks and carry air purifier with us everywhere we go? If you don’t want that to happen, we should start taking actions from today.

by Simeng Alexandra Cai

 

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Posted in Science in the news

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